Spoils of War
by Na'hiel
Summary: Harry is not the hero everyone wants him to be, and that has disastrous consequences for him and for everyone else. Please note all warnings at the start of every chapter.
1. Chapter One: Too Late

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

 **Warnings: Major character death, suicidal thoughts, actual suicide, torture, rape, other things I'm sure. Take care of yourselves when reading this story, and for heaven's sake please check the warnings on each individual chapter.**

Spoils of War

Chapter One - Too Late

Harry was twelve years old, and he was standing before a monster for what felt like the hundredth time in his life.

"Why?" he asked the monster, who could have been human but for the lack of nose, the white skin, and the terrifying red eyes.

"Because I needed to come back and the girl was simply the easiest way to do that. It could have been anybody, Potter. It could have been you." The monster shrugged at him, a vaguely apologetic look on his face, and then he was calling for the basilisk. "Maybe it should have. Now I'll just have to have you killed in a different way."

The basilisk reared before him, hissing and snarling and growling threats that Harry thought maybe he never should have heard at his age. And beyond the hissing and spitting king of snakes lay Ginny Weasley, little Ginny, dead. The man that had stolen her soul was watching and laughing, and Harry turned and fled for his life.

It wasn't enough, he couldn't escape, and eventually he had no choice but to stand and fight. He killed the basilisk, but not without cost to himself. Its fang bit into his arm so deeply that he could feel it scrape against the bone, and Harry cried out in pain.

Fawkes came to him and cried on his arm, healing the wound. But it didn't matter. Harry thought that maybe he should have let the basilisk kill him. After all, he'd been too late to save Ginny. She was dead now, because of him. It was all his fault. If he hadn't managed to stop the Dark Lord as a baby, maybe this wouldn't have happened. Or if he'd just been a little bit faster, if he'd just realized that Lockhart wasn't going to help and had stopped trying to reason with the man...

Too late did he realize that he had no idea what had happened to the man that had stolen Ginny's soul, better known as Lord Voldemort. All he knew was that the Dark Lord was nowhere to be found within the chamber, which could only mean that he'd gotten away. Harry had been too late to stop him from being resurrected. He felt something within him break, but he held it together ruthlessly as he returned for Ginny's corpse.

Her parents deserved the closure that would come with her body. Ginny didn't deserve to lie in this tomb forever.

ooOOooOOoo

"We could live together," Sirius had suggested, a painful looking smile on his haggard face.

Harry had smiled, whispered a shy, "I'd like that," and had no idea how broken the smile he offered his godfather actually was.

Harry was thirteen, and he'd never felt such joy in all his life. Getting away from the Dursleys, living with his godfather, this was the stuff of dreams for him! Sirius didn't even hold Ginny's death against him, not like some others he could mention. Her mother had never really forgiven Harry for not being fast enough.

It could be perfect. It would be perfect.

Except, of course, for the Dementors. Harry tried, oh, he tried as hard as he could. But there was no denying that his life had been utter crap, and he couldn't... he didn't have a memory happy enough. He tried, he tried and he tried and he tried, but even the thought of living with Sirius wasn't enough to conjure a Patronus.

Harry had watched as the Dementors had fallen upon his godfather, his innocent godfather who had done nothing to deserve it, watched as they sucked his soul from his body. Harry had screamed and railed and sobbed, and it had done no good. He'd begged and pleaded, using the words of the incantation that Professor Lupin had struggled all year to teach him like a prayer, and it had done nothing.

Their grisly task complete, the Dementors dispersed leaving Harry cradling the cold, practically dead form of his godfather. Harry sobbed over the blank eyes and the body that didn't realize the mind was dead, and something within him gave just a little bit more.

ooOOooOOoo

Harry was fourteen, and he'd spent the year fighting in a tournament that he hadn't entered. He hadn't had a choice; the Headmaster had said it was good for morale to see the savior of the wizarding world battling in a gladiator-style tournament.

Not that morale mattered, since the Ministry refused to acknowledge that Voldemort had returned. Harry had been subject to countless interrogations since the incident in the Chamber of Secrets two years ago, but the interrogations never seemed to amount to much. It seemed that the wizarding world in general, and the Ministry in particular, was content to bury their heads in the sand and pretend like there wasn't a war brewing.

The Headmaster believed him, though, and he insisted that Harry would do well to show his prowess in the tournament even though he knew that Harry hadn't entered himself. Which led Harry here, to the third and final task, staring at the cup with Cedric Diggory.

"You could take it," he offered shyly to Cedric. "I'm not the real champion; I didn't even enter my own name into the goblet."

"And yet you've done so much better than the rest of us," Cedric said with something like affection in his smile. "No, Harry, we've both earned this. C'mon, take the cup with me," Cedric offered, holding out a hand to Harry.

Harry hesitated, then took Cedric's hand. He was blushing; he couldn't help it. Cedric was so nice to him, so kind, even though they were rivals. And it didn't help that he was awfully cute too. If only Cedric hadn't been so hung up on Cho, maybe there might have been a chance for...

Harry pushed the thoughts down. Now was time for winning the tournament, or at least tying for the win, not for fantasizing over what might have been. But still, the feeling of Cedric's hand on his own was something he would savor for a very long time.

He glanced at Cedric just before they took the cup, and was pleased to see a bit of intrigue in the other Champion's eye. Maybe his crush on Cedric wasn't so hopeless as he'd thought. Maybe... maybe he actually stood a chance with the other Champion.

"Harry," Cedric began, but then he shook his head. "You've got a tournament to win, yeah?" the prefect offered instead.

"Yeah," Harry confirmed. "And you've got one to place second in," he added, an impish grin coming to his lips. Maybe, just maybe, this year would turn out to be okay after all.

They grasped the Cup together, one hand each on the cup and one each holding on to each other, and Harry winced at the sickening sensation of a portkey hooking into his navel.

They came back into the world in the midst of what should have been the winner's circle, but was instead utter chaos. The stands had been overrun by dozens of figures wearing white masks and black robes, figures that Harry recognized now to be Death Eaters.

"No," he whispered, drawing his wand before he could even think about it. There were people being hurt here. He could help them. What had all of his training for the tournament been for if not to fight?

" _Avada Kedavra_!" an unknown voice shouted.

"Harry, no!" Cedric roared, and Harry was knocked aside by the other Champion. Cedric smiled down at Harry, an expression filled with such warmth, such affection, that it took Harry's breath away. And then Cedric's face was frozen forever like that as the Killing Curse struck him full on, leaving his corpse on top of Harry's body.

Harry screamed, shoved the corpse off of him, and jumped to his feet only to find that the fighting was already winding down. He stayed with Cedric's body, sobbing helplessly over the other Champion's corpse. There was nothing he could do, no tears he could shed that would bring Cedric back.

Cedric wasn't the only one to die that day. The body count that day was high, too high; the Light lost a lot of people. Good people who hadn't deserved the end they'd been given. Professor McGonagall had fallen getting the students back into the castle, and Molly and Bill Weasley had fallen keeping the castle safe while the fighting died down. Their killers weren't caught. None of the Death Eaters were caught. All the casualties seemed to be on the side of the Light.

It had been a slaughter. The Ministry believed Harry now; they didn't have a choice with the evidence staring them in the face the way that it was. The press railed at Harry, wanting to know why he hadn't pushed the Ministry harder to believe the Dark Lord was back, why he hadn't gone to them with his story when the Ministry refused to listen. They called him a coward.

The worst part was that Harry couldn't find a way to deny that very fact. He was a coward. He was also, again, too late to warn the people before the disastrous attack had occurred. The press, led by Rita Skeeter, had every right to hate him for his failures.

Harry certainly hated himself.

ooOOooOOoo

Harry was fifteen, and Professor Umbridge had been keeping an eye on the school for far too long. He was tired, so tired, of not being what the good Professor wanted in a hero for the Ministry. His posture wasn't straight enough, he didn't speak decisively enough, he wasn't powerful enough. He was useless to the Ministry in his current state.

He couldn't be taught anything of worth, she said to him. But he could be taught pain. He could be taught to withstand so much of it. His hand... _I will not be a pathetic, snivelling coward_. Written over and over and over, carved into his own flesh by his own hand. Harry fought so hard not to cry over it, to just go on with his day, with each day, day in and day out.

Even if he had endured a terrible dream last night. Merlin, what was wrong with him that he'd dream about Mr. Weasley's death like that? Ron had already lost his mom and his sister, he didn't need to lose his dad too. Was it just that Harry was sick enough to want Ron to suffer too? But no, that couldn't be it. He loved... no, he liked Ron. Ron was his best friend. Why would he want Ron to suffer?

But when he went down to breakfast that morning Ron wasn't there. The twins were also nowhere to be found, but that was more normal. They'd never been what one might consider early risers. Hermione was, though, sitting quietly, her eyes red-rimmed. She was holding a cup of pumpkin juice in front of her, but didn't seem to be interested in drinking it. "H-Harry," she sniffled when Harry sat down across from her.

A ball of dread began to form in the pit of Harry's stomach. "What's wrong, 'Mione?" he asked, and reached out to hesitantly touch her hand.

"It's... it's awful!" she sobbed, and suddenly bent over her juice as though she couldn't contain her sorrow. Her shoulders were shaking with the force of her sobs, and Harry hesitantly reached out and took her trembling hand.

"What happened?" he asked, hoping that something hadn't happened to her parents. But that wouldn't account for Ron not... not being there. _Oh, no. Oh Merlin, no_ , he thought to himself.

"It's Mr. Weasley," she finally managed in a low, broken whisper. "We don't know what happened, but he was attacked last night. They didn't... they didn't find out in time, and he... he didn't survive the night!" Hermione began sobbing once more.

Harry couldn't cry. He'd seen it happen. He'd known it was happening. He'd let it happen, and he hadn't done anything to stop it. He was a monster. He deserved everything that Umbridge threw at him, now.

ooOOooOOoo

Harry was still fifteen, and he still hadn't changed his mind. He deserved what he got from Umbridge. Ron had returned to school after Christmas break, but the twins hadn't. Apparently they didn't see any point to school now that both their parents were gone, and they wanted to have money together to support Ron so that he wouldn't wind up in Percy's care. Since Percy was still treating Harry like some kind of monster, Ron was very grateful for that.

Harry felt that Percy maybe had the right idea of it.

He was a monster. Everything around him turned to ashes. He couldn't do anything right. How could the Ministry expect him to be some kind of hero a second time when he couldn't even save his best friend's parents? He didn't deserve to be such an icon of the wizarding world. He was worse than a monster. At least a monster had a purpose. Harry was just... Harry was just extraneous at this point.

So he took everything that Umbridge gave him. Every detention, which came every day now, he wrote out his lines without complaint. He was a pathetic, snivelling coward. Maybe writing these lines would help him to be better. Nothing else he'd tried had worked.

"I won't!" Dennis Creevey shouted suddenly, drawing Harry from his reverie. Professor Umbridge was standing over the little second year, looking rather smug.

"Mr. Creevey, you will indeed report to your fifteenth detention with me this evening, or face disciplinary action," the Professor said calmly, never losing her sweet facade.

"No! I won't, I won't do it! I didn't even do anything wrong; you can't make me, it isn't right to treat children like this!" Dennis shouted, his little body trembling.

Harry felt sympathy for the boy, but didn't he know it was better to just keep his head down and do what he was told? Standing up for oneself only got one in more trouble. And Harry was so very tired of being in trouble.

"Do you see anybody here to stop me?" Professor Umbridge asked, and gestured rather expansively at the Head Table. It was true. Professor Sprout was there, but she was looking down and away, her lips pursed in displeasure. Professor Snape was watching the scene with polite disinterest. Professor Flitwick had been dismissed shortly after Umbridge had taken over the school, and Professor Sinistra, who had taken over for him as head of Ravenclaw, was concentrating rather intently on her plate of food. And as always, or so it seemed this year, the Headmaster was nowhere to be found.

"Professor Snape, please!" Dennis begged, standing up and reaching out a hand to the Deputy Headmaster.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Creevey, but as the High Inquisitor, Professor Umbridge has every right to hand out detentions as she sees fit," Professor Snape said. His voice was dark with distaste, but he was apparently unwilling to say anything against Umbridge. Harry could understand that. Nobody seemed to have any power over the bitch.

"Do you see, Mr. Creevey? You cannot get out of your detention with such theatrics. And now, you may add an extra three days to your detention for disturbing your fellow students and their meals." Professor Umbridge turned to walk away, as though she hadn't just ordered poor little Dennis to report to her office for torture for four days in a row.

"I won't!" Dennis shouted suddenly.

Before Harry realized what the little boy was doing, before anybody did, he'd uncorked a vial of something that smoked ominously when it was opened.

"Dennis!" Colin shouted, and lunged for his little brother.

But Dennis seemed to be beyond caring. "None of you will stop her, none of you care!" he screamed hysterically, tears streaming down his face. "None of you will help us! I can't... I can't do it anymore! I won't carve her words into me any longer!" He swallowed the smoking potion in one gulp.

The teachers were moving, now, trying to help, and Harry could dully hear somebody shouting for Madam Pomfrey over the rushing in his ears. It didn't matter. She would be too late, Harry knew it.

This, too, was his fault. If he hadn't... if he'd been stronger, better, smarter, maybe he could have found a way to deal with Umbridge before this could happen. He was too weak, too pathetic, too broken to be of any use to anybody.

Professor Umbridge wound up going to Azkaban and getting the Kiss. It was too late. Dennis was dead before Madam Pomfrey even reached the Great Hall.

ooOOooOOoo

Harry was fifteen still, and his year was not yet over. He and Ron and Hermione and Neville were after something in the Department of Mysteries. Remus was being held there, according to the visions Harry had been having. Remus was being held captive, and Remus was the last strong link he had to his parents. Harry couldn't let the werewolf die. He just couldn't.

So he and the others made their way, unopposed with Hogwarts being the mess that it currently was, from the grounds and into the Department of Mysteries. It took them forever to navigate the maze, and with each moment that passed Harry just knew that Remus was being hurt that much more. It was terrible to think of Moony stuck here, with the monstrous Death Eaters, and Harry couldn't let... he couldn't let another person suffer just because of him.

But then they reached the area where Moony was allegedly being held, and he wasn't there. He wasn't... he wasn't there. Harry fell to his knees, too confused, too depressed, too lost to figure out what to do now.

"Harry?" Hermione asked gently. "Are you sure? I mean, why did you think that Moony was being held here?"

Harry opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. He'd never told Ron about the vision he'd had, about the chance that he'd missed to save Arthur Weasley. How could he tell them now, that the reason he'd been so sure was because the last time the vision had been real? He'd never... they'd never forgive him.

Maybe he didn't deserve their forgiveness.

He opened his mouth to speak, only to be interrupted by a cold, "My, my, I didn't think the Potter brat was really as stupid as this!" followed by a bout of insane laughter. "Listen up, brat, and if you do as we say you might get out of here alive," the wild-haired woman said as they turned to face her, wands out. It took Harry a moment longer because he had to struggle to his feet.

"Who are you?" he asked, wand pointed at the strange witch with the tattered robes. He tried to ignore the way his wand shook, tried to be more fierce in appearance.

She cackled once more, a chilling sound that made Harry shudder. "Silly, silly pretty little boy, my name doesn't matter. All you need to do is perform one simple, little task for me, and you can be on your way." She paused, her head fell to one side, and she added, "Don't, and I'll enjoy torturing you until you change your mind."

And then the prophecy sphere was in his hands, but he'd be damned if he was actually going to give it to the bitch, so he threw it on the ground and tried to listen as Professor Trelawney revealed the reason for the Dark Lord's hatred of him.

The Order was there, quite suddenly it seemed to Harry who was still trying to absorb the fact that a prophecy had been the cause of his miserable life thus far. He was surrounded by the battle and though he tried he really wasn't much help in the fight. Somehow, Harry couldn't exactly recall how in the confusion of it all, they wound up back in the room with the Veil, and as Harry watched in horror Professor Lupin was bound in silver wire by a curse thrown by the wild-haired woman who could only be Bellatrix Lestrange, and then he tripped and fell right through the Veil.

Harry screamed, tried to run after him, but Ron and Hermione held tightly onto him, preventing him from doing so. Harry's heart shattered as the last link to his parents was torn quite viciously from him. He didn't know how much more he could take.

ooOOooOOoo

Harry was sixteen, now, and the year was going from bad to worse. Slughorn was dead, likely at the hands of Malfoy. Harry hadn't managed to get the memory that the Headmaster had asked him for before the man was poisoned. Malfoy had killed three students in his attempts to get to the Headmaster, but he'd never really gotten close and nobody had realized that he was the one responsible for the deaths until right this moment. In spite of all of the Headmaster's faults, he'd always seemed indestructible. Harry had never imagined that it would come to this.

It had come to this, though. Himself, bound and silenced under his invisibility cloak, watching the Headmaster backed up against the ledge of the Astronomy Tower. Malfoy, standing in front of him, calm with his wand pointed at Headmaster Dumbledore. And Snape, who the Headmaster apparently trusted, standing behind Malfoy, eyes narrowed and a firm hold on his shoulder with one hand, his wand raised in the other.

"You don't have to do this, Mr. Malfoy," the Headmaster was saying.

"Of course I don't," Malfoy agreed. He sounded amused. "But why wouldn't I? My family has found great favor with the Dark Lord, and your death will only serve to increase it. It isn't as though the Light has any hope in this war, after all."

"There's always hope, Mr. Malfoy." The Headmaster took one careful step forward. "There is still the matter of the prophecy."

Malfoy laughed. "The prophecy? Please, old man, you can't possibly think that Potter stands any chance of fulfilling it. He's useless."

Headmaster Dumbledore let out a small sigh. "I admit that he isn't the hero I had hoped for," he said, and that hurt because he knew that Harry was sitting right there, listening. It was true, of course, but it still hurt. "He still has a chance, however."

"Have you considered that the prophecy was already fulfilled, Albus?" Snape asked, sounding genuinely interested. "He did, after all, defeat the Dark Lord once. Perhaps that was the only act of heroism Potter was truly capable of."

The Headmaster shook his head. "I cannot allow myself to think that way, Severus. There must be a way out of this for all of us."

"You always were eternally optimistic," Snape said with a shake of his head. "Draco, would you like to do the honors or should I?"

Harry began to struggle against his bonds, but knew before he tried that it would do no good. He wasn't strong enough to break the spells the Headmaster had cast upon him. And even if he were, what good would it do? He was no match for the Death Eaters on the roof of the Tower. They would kill him before he managed to so much as scratch one of them.

"It would be my honor," Malfoy said quietly. He flicked his wand, then, and with little ceremony said, " _Avada Kedavra!_ "

Harry wanted to cry out but he couldn't make his mouth work. And then the spell hit and the bonds holding him relaxed and he could have moved but it was too late to do anything useful. So he stayed still and silent even when the Dark Lord himself arrived and Malfoy handed over the Headmaster's wand.

It wasn't until he was alone on the Tower that he allowed himself to cry, and even then not for long. He forced himself to his feet, to start moving. If he stayed at Hogwarts then he would be killed. He fled into the Forest, trying to figure out where to go from there. He decided to go to Grimmauld Place, because its location would hopefully still be protected.

There, he found Ron and Hermione waiting with a note from the Headmaster. He hadn't expected them, not since he'd ruined their friendship by kissing Ron earlier in the year. They'd said that they forgave him for that because they hadn't told him they were together, but things had been awkward and strained ever since.

The note led them to a journal that explained Voldemort's horcruxes and what they probably were, and the search began.

ooOOooOOoo

Harry was twenty, now, and had been fighting for too long. Losing for too long, too. They'd lost the Dursleys before they could even really try to save them. The Burrow had burned with what remained of the Weasley family in it, except for the Fred and Ron. Hagrid had died covering their retreat from the castle after an unsuccessful attempt at ending Nagini's life.

It had been after Hagrid's death two years ago that Ron and Hermione had brought him into their relationship. It had been the one bit of brightness in a world that Harry wasn't even sure he wanted to save anymore. And now even that was over.

"Come on, Harry, we have to keep moving," Ron was hissing urgently in his ear, and Harry stumbled along obediently beside him. "Come on, that's it, we're almost to freedom," the redhead coaxed when Harry stumbled.

He'd been saying that for weeks. The Death Eaters were just playing with them, now, keeping the anti-Apparition wards up for as long as they had and over the distances that they had. They were trying to run them down, and Harry was almost certain that they were succeeding.

"I can't," Harry said, voice thick with exhaustion. "It's too much," he managed to gasp out, and then he tripped over a loose bit of gravel and cried out in pain as he felt something in his knee give way in a way that it shouldn't. Once down he stayed down on his knees, unable to bring himself to climb back to his feet, to keep running, to move before... before... but would resting really be so bad?

"Harry, no, come on, we have to keep going," Ron pleaded, tugging ineffectively at Harry's arm. "We have to... Hermione would..." Ron stopped, choked down a sob, and continued with, "Hermione wouldn't want us to give up."

At the memory of Hermione, clever and vicious and beautiful Hermione, her face shocked and horrified as she was splayed open by a well-cast _sectumsempra_. Harry had tried, oh, he'd tried to fix her, to put her back together, but he hadn't been able to find all of her parts...

Ron had been forced to drag him away from her body, Harry's hands still wet with her blood as he'd tried to hold her together. Her last words had been a choked out, "Run," and then they'd been running again. And again.

It had been over a month, and they hadn't been able to stop running. Her blood was probably still under his fingernails because there just wasn't time to get clean.

"It's too much, Ron," Harry managed. "I can't keep this up. I can't..." Harry shook his head, weary beyond words. His body, his entire body was sore. His knee was swollen already, and he wasn't sure if he'd be able to regain his footing if he tried at this point. And it was just them now. What was the point in running any longer when it was just the two of them?

The two of them to fight off an entire army? It was... it was impossible. Harry was tired of trying to do the impossible, he really was.

"Can't you keep going, Harry? Just a bit longer, and then we'll rest for the night," Ron pleaded. He was still tugging on Harry's arm, still trying to pull Harry to his feet.

They hadn't seen the Death Eaters in over a week, now. So maybe... "I don't think I can run any longer," Harry confessed "Maybe I can walk?"

"That's it, that's my Harry," Ron said, and helped him to his feet. Harry had to lean heavily on him; his knee felt like it was going to give out with every step he took. Ron leaned in, gave him a swift but gentle kiss on the lips. "Just a few more steps, and we'll make it to someplace safe for the night. Maybe out of the anti-Apparition fields, and back to headquarters. And we'll get your knee set up to rest a bit, and everything will be just fine. And in the morning, maybe we'll have some hot tea, and something warm to eat, because everything always feels better when there's something warm in your belly, yeah?" As he spoke, Ron helped to move them both slowly forward, one arm slung around Harry's waist and the other clutching Harry's hand.

Harry smiled. Ron always knew what to say. Always. "Sounds like a plan." He leaned heavily against his friend, his lover, whatever they were, letting himself be coaxed into motion, letting his friend/partner/lover lead him in the direction of the place they'd already picked out on their map to spend the night. One more night, and in the morning things would look better. They always looked better in the bright sunshine of the morning.

" _Diffindo_!" a sharp voice called, and too late did Harry notice the shadow of the Death Eater just ahead of them. He knocked Ron to the side, but it was too late. Too late. He was only knocking half of a corpse off its feet and Harry stared into Ron's dead blue eyes before letting out a broken little noise.

He stood, he turned, he shouted out a hoarse, " _Avada Kedavra!_ " of his own, and the Death Eater who'd cast the spell went down, dead as well. Too late, far too late, Harry noticed the tingle in the back of his mind and the sudden lack of Apparition warding. Harry didn't spare time to think, didn't take the chance to consider, he simply Apparated away with a loud _crack!_ that announced to anyone in the area that he'd been there. He wouldn't be able to look for the horcrux Hermione had thought was there for a long time now. And that was the last one the Headmaster had suspected, other than Nagini herself.

Which meant there was nothing to do but to go home, such as it was. The Diadem would no doubt be moved, now, and Harry didn't even know where he'd begin to look for it next. Hermione had been the one to find it in the first place, and she was... she was gone. And so was Ron. Harry had been too late again.

ooOOooOOoo

Too late, always too late.

The words ran through Harry's mind over and over and over as he wandered the cold, lonely, dark halls of Grimmauld Place.

Too late for Ginny, for Sirius, for Cedric, and for the Headmaster. Too late for the Dursleys and for Hagrid and everyone else who'd had so much faith in him. Too late to save Hermione. And now, too late to save Ron.

Harry was very, very tired of being too late.

"Kreacher has a letter for Master Harry," the house elf said as he appeared at Harry's elbow.

Maybe he'd been there for an hour, maybe a minute, maybe a month, Harry neither knew nor cared. He hadn't been able to bring himself to care about much of anything now that Ron was gone as well. There wasn't anything left to do. He hadn't even begun researching where Voldemort might have moved the diadem to.

Harry stirred himself enough to ask, "Who's it from?" His voice wasn't as creaky as he'd thought it should be for a month of disuse, which meant that he hadn't been hiding in his darkened room for a month. That didn't mean that he had any idea how long he'd been unresponsive, though.

"It's from Fred," the little elf answered.

Harry closed his eyes against the pain that erupted within him at the statement. Fred, the only Weasley left alive after everything was said and done. Ginny died in the Chamber, Molly protecting Hogwarts, Arthur guarding the useless prophecy, Percy defending the Ministry, and what remained had burned. Everyone had died, now, one way or another. Even Ron had, in the end. Harry was alone now, always so alone.

"What does he want?" he asked hoarsely. Kreacher snapped his fingers impatiently and a glass of water popped into existence next to Harry. He took a drink, savored the soothing sensation of the water trickling down his throat, and whispered, "Thank you."

The elf didn't respond to the praise; he never did. "Kreacher cannot understand Master Weasley and his code," he sneered.

"I'll take the letter, then," Harry whispered, and took the letter from Kreacher.

It was a short note, simple and to the point.

 _Dearest Harry,_

 _I'm sorry to hear about Ron. Don't blame yourself, Harry, I'm sure that Ron_

 _was being the hero. I know that he and Hermione wanted what was best for you, so they'd like you to come be watched by me for a bit. Let me take_

 _care of you and keep you safe_

 _for a bit. You need to be taken_

 _care of. You know where to find me._

 _Harry, you can't keep hiding, don't run from me._

 _Come and visit with me, Harry._

 _I'll get you lots of presents to hopefully take your mind off Ron and Hermione, and I know_

 _you miss me._

 _Love,_

 _Fred._

The code was a simple one, but they'd never had time to make one more complicated. The first word of the first line, the second of the second, and so on and so forth, starting over with every new paragraph. The message was simple and urgent, and left Harry breathless. _I'm being watched and need to run_ , the letter said. _Come get me_.

"I have to go," Harry said to Kreacher. He grabbed his Invisibility Cloak and his wand, and limped over to the fireplace before he could think better of it. His knee was still swollen and sore, and Harry knew that he was in no way capable of dealing with any serious opposition. His body was still too fragile after his month on the run with Ron, and he'd made no attempt at getting himself back into fighting shape. He hadn't seen the point in trying.

But he couldn't let Fred die. He just couldn't. He had to try to save him.

ooOOooOOoo

Diagon Alley was burning.

The flames were far too intense, but Harry couldn't... he just couldn't give up. He fought his way through them, fought until he reached number 93, Fred's shop. It was all ablaze, but that didn't stop Harry from seeing him. Fred, at least he assumed that it was Fred, broken and bleeding and hanging from his shop windows, his corpse only just now being kissed by the flames.

He was too late again.

Harry fell to his knees, ignored the sharp pain in the damaged one. He couldn't do this anymore. The stunner, when it hit him, was almost a relief. He couldn't fight anymore. It was over.

* * *

A/N: It has taken me a year just to get this far into this story. Recently I've been working on it a bit more, and decided to post the first chapter. Please don't ask me when this will update, because I make no promises.


	2. Chapter Two: His Most Loyal

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

 **Warnings: Rape, torture, suicidal thoughts, insanity, slavery.**

Spoils of War

Chapter Two - His Most Loyal

Harry woke only when his captors were ready for him to do so, in what had once been the Great Hall of Hogwarts. It had been changed, refashioned into some kind of throne room, and the thing on the throne could only be Lord Voldemort. His throne rested where the teachers had once been seated, so that anyone on the lower level of the hall was forced to look up to him if they wanted to see him.

The snake-faced man was decked out in resplendent robes, surrounded by several of his most loyal followers including the Malfoys and the Lestrange woman. Harry was at their feet, bound hand and foot, wearing only a thin grey shift. He was on his knees, a position that had his injured knee screaming in protest. He knew, without even having to check for it, that he was wandless.

It didn't matter. He was done fighting.

"Harry Potter," Voldemort crooned at him, his lips quirking in a parody of a grin. "How nice of you to come and see us. Tell me, dear boy, how have you been enjoying your time causing trouble for me and mine?"

Harry opened his mouth to say something sarcastic, but he just… he didn't have it in him, anymore. This was it. The fight was over. "I'm sorry that I didn't succeed," he said finally, truthfully. What did it matter how he answered? He was dead no matter what.

Voldemort laughed, a high and chilling sound. "I just bet that you are," he said through his cackles. "Tell me, once your only support was eliminated, did you really think you had a chance?"

Harry shook his head. "I knew that I didn't," he said tiredly.

"Well, I'm pleased to hear that you aren't entirely deluded, Potter." Voldemort turned his head to one side and said, "Severus, won't you be a dear and read the charges for our audience?"

Harry hadn't heard anything coming from behind him, but when he turned his head ever so slightly he could see them, silent, out of the corner of his eye. It looked like they were just random witches and wizards, not necessarily Death Eaters. It didn't matter, he supposed, who watched him die. He was just amused that he was going to get an actual trial, for whatever that was worth.

Snape's voice rang out from just behind the Dark Lord, where Harry hadn't noticed him while cataloguing the other Death Eaters on the dais. "Harry Potter stands accused of subversive behavior, terrorism, murder, theft, and destruction of property." The Potions Master lowered the scrap of parchment he'd been reading from and fell silent once he'd read the charges.

"Well, Potter? Anything to say to that?" Voldemort sounded almost bored, but Harry wasn't fooled. His scar was burning, and he could tell that the snake-faced bastard was excited by this, his chance to finally kill Harry for the simple crime of living.

"No," Harry said honestly. What could he say, anyway? He'd done all of the above in his efforts to stop Voldemort. If he'd thought it would have done any good, he probably would have done even worse. The Headmaster had entrusted him with this task, and Harry had failed it abysmally.

Just like he'd failed every other task that had ever been put before him.

"No last minute attempt at defending your heinous behavior against the upstanding members of our new society?" Voldemort's eyes widened ever so slightly and he leaned forward. "Potter, I'm surprised at you. That prophecy about you and I should have meant you were stronger than this."

Harry looked down and closed his eyes against a sudden swell of tears. It should have meant a lot of things. It should have meant that he would have a fighting chance when it came down to it, but he'd never had a shot. He swallowed around the lump in his throat and tried not to react when his tears overflowed and splattered against the stone of the floor, making a few of the Death Eaters snicker in amusement at his pain.

"Well, this just pathetic," Voldemort finally said, leaning back with a sigh. "Fine, then. Since you're not going to even try defending yourself, I guess we'll just call it like it is: You're guilty, Potter. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with you yet, but I promise that your days as a free man are over."

Harry looked up at Voldemort. "Free?" he asked quietly, and let out a small, bitter laugh. "Please, Tom, if there's one thing I've never been, it was free."

" _Crucio!_ " Voldemort barked out, and the red stream of light hit Harry dead on. He couldn't have said how long he writhed in pain before Voldemort lifted the curse, a snarl of rage still on his face. "You don't call me by that name, Potter. Not now, not ever!" He jerked his head once, like he was tossing his nonexistent hair, then said, "Take him to the dungeons."

Harry didn't struggle when two of the guards grabbed him by the shoulders and jerked him roughly to his feet, and he didn't bother trying to get his feet under himself as he was dragged through the castle in the direction of the dungeons. His knee actually hurt less when he was dragged as opposed to if he'd tried walking under his own power.

The dungeons, too, had been remodeled, Harry found. They'd once been classrooms and the Slytherin common room, but now they were proper dungeons. The Slytherin common room had been altered so that each of the dorms housed four or five small cells, most of which were unoccupied. Harry was taken to a completely empty block and thrown into the cell, hard enough that he smacked into the opposite wall.

He landed on the floor with a thud and didn't bother trying to move, even though it was cold and hard. He felt something wet land on him and realized that he'd just been spit on. Harry didn't even move to wipe it off. Why bother? Worse things were going to be done to him, he was sure, unless he was very luck and Voldemort killed him quickly.

The hope that he would be lucky for the first time in his life was almost painful, yet Harry couldn't manage to suppress it.

The door to his cell clanged shut, and only then did Harry move. He stood and looked around his tiny cell, taking it all in with a glance. There was a pot where he was probably supposed to go to the bathroom, and a tiny little cot that would have looked uninviting had Harry not spent most of his childhood living in a cupboard under the stairs. At least this cot came with a blanket, as thin as it was.

Harry walked over to the tiny cot with its flat mattress and curled up on it, his leg still throbbing from his earlier injury and his back now sore from connecting with the wall as hard as he had. He let his eyes slip closed and hoped that whatever was going to happen to him, however bad it was, he hoped that it was over soon.

 _You can do this Harry_. The voice, oddly familiar, came from nowhere and everywhere, and Harry's eyes jerked open. He didn't see anyone, though, so he closed his eyes and tried to drift off to sleep.

Eventually, it worked.

ooOOooOOoo

He listened to the voices outside of his cell for what felt like forever before realizing with a start that those voices didn't belong to his normal keepers. They were talking about something, though Harry couldn't quite manage to make it out. He thought maybe he heard something that should have caught his attention, but he couldn't be bothered enough to care. What did it matter? He was going to die here.

Eventually, his cell door slammed open and the two unfamiliar Death Eaters entered. "On your feet, Potter," one of them commanded. He was young, maybe younger than Harry, and his voice shook as he gave the order.

Harry looked him over and considered for only a moment trying to get out, trying to run. He gave the thought up before his mental self could even get through the door to his cell, and instead stood as he'd been commanded. His knee had improved while he'd been in his cell, so it didn't hurt much anymore. It still wasn't completely better, but at least the pain had faded to a dull ache.

"Do we need to drag you, or will you walk?" the second Death Eater asked. He seemed almost bored, unlike his nervous companion.

"I'll walk," Harry said. He didn't protest when the chains were attached to his arms and legs once more, though he did try to jerk his head away when a heavy metal collar was fastened around his throat. It did no good, and soon enough Harry was leashed like an animal, each of the two guards holding an end of the double leash.

Part of Harry was humiliated, was screaming at him for just taking this treatment and not fighting it, but that part was dulled by the exhaustion that held Harry in its grip. What did it matter if he were chained like a dog? Hopefully he'd be dead soon and it wouldn't matter.

And maybe… just maybe… if they left him alone with the collar on, Harry wasn't certain but he thought that maybe he could find a way to get the collar stuck on something. Then he would strangle to death, and then it would all just be finished.

The thought was almost enough to make him smile. He was ready for this to be over. He'd done his best, and now there was nothing more to do.

He realized where they were going only a few minutes before they got there, by simple virtue of the fact that he wasn't paying attention. They were headed back to the Great Hall, and Harry hoped that it was for his execution. He was so tired, and he just wanted to rest.

The room was crowded, packed, maybe more than it had been the day he'd first been brought in, though Harry couldn't be sure given that he'd never gotten a good look at the crowd. They certainly weren't silent like the last crowd had been, muttering and whispering as soon as they caught sight of Harry, bound in chains that were almost bigger than he was.

"Hello again, Potter," Voldemort said, sounding almost friendly.

"Voldemort," Harry said. Part of him ached to address the Dark Lord by his birth name, but what good would it do? It would just get him hurt more, and Harry was so very tired of being hurt.

"I see that you can be taught," Voldemort said with a nod. "That's good to know, Harry, because I was worried that I would have to put you down if you couldn't learn one simple lesson."

Harry's head jerked up, his eyes widening. That sounded like… like Voldemort wasn't planning on killing him. No, no, that couldn't be right. Harry was so tired, so finished with this life. Voldemort couldn't want to keep him alive!

"Since you can be trained, Potter, I've decided that I'm going to let you be… re-educated by some of my best and brightest Death Eaters. And you should be pleased, because you'll be serving a need that's long gone unfilled in them!"

Harry thought that maybe, just maybe he might know where this was going. He wanted to hope that he was wrong, but things never went the way he hoped.

Voldemort leaned forward in his seat. "They've worked so hard for so long, due in large part to the fact that you and your ridiculous friends refused to give up the fight, that I've simply got to reward them." Voldemort laughed, a polite little thing that sounded ridiculous coming from him. "You just don't understand how difficult it is to reward my followers, given how much money they all already have." He fell silent then, and raised a brow at Harry as though waiting for a response.

"I'm sorry for your difficulties," Harry said finally when it became clear that Voldemort wasn't going to go on until he got an answer from Harry. Part of him wanted to beg, but part of him was too tired to do so. And a very, very small part of him refused to beg the monster in front of him for anything.

Voldemort nodded once. "I can't tell you how pleased I am to hear you say that, since I'm going to reward my Death Eaters with the opportunity in assisting you with your re-education."

Harry's eyes widened in horror as his hope was crushed, fear breaking through his exhaustion and making him try to scramble backwards. The two guards holding him were ready for the attempt, though, and all Harry managed to do was hurt his neck. "Please," Harry started, then cut off. What good had begging ever done him?

"Bellatrix has been so very good for me lately, haven't you, darling?" Voldemort practically crooned to the wild haired witch standing on his right side.

Immediately the woman straightened. "I try my hardest, my lord," she said, her voice breathy and her eyes sparking. "Please, please let me have a chance at teaching the boy his place," she begged, resting both of her hands on the arm of Voldemort's throne.

Voldemort reached out and petted her hair with an indulgent smile. "As though I'd give him to any other before I gave him to you, Bella." He nodded at Harry. "Take him, please. But do remember that I want him alive. It wouldn't do to kill the Boy Who Lived, after all. What would they call him then?"

Harry tried to pull away again, but Bella took both of his leashes from the two guards and jerked on them with all of her strength, which turned out to be considerable. Harry dropped to his knees and clutched at his throat, trying to get the collar off.

Instead of it doing him any good, it only made things worse, as Bellatrix was apparently strong enough to drag Harry along on the ground. She didn't give Harry a chance to get back onto his feet, and didn't even try to help him when they came to a flight of stairs. Harry's body thudded against the stairs as she dragged him up. Finally, mercifully, his head cracked against one of the steps and everything went black.

ooOOooOOoo

Harry returned to consciousness on a chair, tied securely in place, colder than he'd thought he'd ever been in his life. It took him a few seconds to realize why, but it hit him all at once: he was naked. Horrified, Harry started to struggle, to try and break free of the ropes holding him in place, but he couldn't quite manage it.

He opened his mouth to cry for help, but realized suddenly that it didn't matter. He could call for all of the help he wanted; nobody was going to come. He was a prisoner here, at least until Voldemort and his Death Eaters tired of him.

All he could do is hope that it was over quickly.

He heard the creak of a door opening, heard footsteps approach his chair from behind. He tried to crane his head around to see who was coming in, but he couldn't manage it. "Poor little Potter," Bellatrix's disgusting voice crooned.

Harry shuddered. "Please don't," he said. "Please don't hurt me."

"Hurt you?" Bellatrix cackled. "No, no, pretty little Potter, I'm not going to hurt you," she said. She slipped around to his front, trailing a hand over his naked flesh as she did so. "I'm going to have so much fun with you, actually. I'm going to give you the things that all boys want, and you're going to enjoy it so very much."

Harry shuddered and felt bile rising in his throat. He tried to pull away, but the bindings on him were tight enough that he couldn't do anything at all, much less move away.

She continued to pet him, almost like one might pet a dog, then she leaned forward and studied his naked lap. "Hmm," she said. "Maybe you're not a boy after all?" She touched him, then, grabbing his length and playing with it, and Harry's skin crawled at her touch. It was even worse, though, because he could feel himself starting to react. "There we go!" she sang. She pulled her hand back, and Harry's disgust was great enough that whatever reaction she'd started to get from him quickly went away. "Well. That's disappointing," she muttered.

Bellatrix stalked to the other side of the room, grabbing a small vial from a table set up over there. "Pity, really. I'd imagine your Mudblood whore of a girlfriend was pretty disappointed since you seem to have trouble maintaining." Then she laughed again. "Then again, rumor has it that she was smart for a Mudblood. Maybe she knew all about these pretty little potions. Did she have to help you get it up, Potter?'

Harry bit down on the protest that wanted to come. That Hermione had neither been a Mudblood nor a whore, and that he'd never needed potions when he was with her or Ron. Bellatrix was looking to get a rise out of him, and Harry wouldn't give her the satisfaction. Besides, if he didn't open his mouth then he couldn't consume the potion.

Except, as it turned out, he didn't need to consume it. Bellatrix put on a glove and started to smear the potion on Harry's skin, and Harry began to burn. He wished that he didn't remember what happened next. He wished that he didn't remember her skin against his, her eyes boring into him, her mouth tasting him. He was desperate not to remember the number of times he reached completion at her hands, the way she laughed and mocked each and every one.

He remembered all of it, and Harry her more than he'd ever hated anyone else.

When she was finished with him, and she did eventually finish in spite of the fact that it seemed like it would last forever, she entertained herself by holding Harry under the Cruciatus curse. That was fine. The pain, while excruciating, was more bearable than the pleasure he'd received at her hands.

In the end, exhausted and hurting and even more broken than he'd ever been, she finished with him. She doused him with cold water to clean the worst of their fluids off, then levitated his limp body and took him from the dungeon to her suite of rooms.

She smiled ever so sweetly at him, then placed his unresponsive body in her closet. "Since I hear that you're used to sleeping in places like this. Didn't you grow up in one, Potter?"

The door slammed shut before he could respond, but that was fine. Harry didn't have the strength or the energy. The world went black around him, but at least he wasn't hurting anymore.

ooOOooOOoo

"It's okay, Harry," a soft voice whispered to him, and Harry thought he could feel the ghost of gentle hands on his skin, could feel the ghost of soft lips pressed against his own. They were cold and barely there, and when Harry opened his eyes there was nothing there at all.

"It's not," he whispered to the voice he'd heard.

Immediately, another voice said, "It's all going to be fine, Harry. No matter how awful things are right now, they'll get better. We promise, you'll be okay." The second voice was more masculine. Both seemed strangely familiar, but before Harry could start to figure out who they were the closet door was slamming open.

Bellatrix hauled him out of the closet with hands like talons and flung him to the floor. "Thinks he can talk to me like that?" she was muttering, like she didn't even realize that she'd pulled Harry from the closet. "Jumped up little twit! Thinks just because he married my sister he can tell me what to do?"

She pointed her wand at Harry and he didn't even need to think about what curse she would be using as it hit him. He writhed in the agony of the curse, knowing that he was screaming and begging but unable to stop himself from doing so. He wanted it to stop, to be over.

It went on forever. Then it got worse, as another burning started within him and he realized what she was doing. She was using him while torturing him. He couldn't think and the pain was terrible and the pleasure was worse and how could he be enjoying this? He hated her, hated her more than he'd ever hated anyone in his entire life.

The pain continued and continued and Harry knew it would never end and then it did.

It cut off and he was left, spasming and trembling on the floor, Bellatrix standing over him and staring at him with her cold black eyes. "Well. You were certainly more lively that time," she said, adjusting her skirt. "In fact, that was almost fun. We'll have to do it again next time."

Harry opened his mouth to beg, but he couldn't get words out because he couldn't stop trembling. His muscles were still seizing, and he tried to shift, to move, to do something, but he couldn't. He was, instead, thrown back into the closet, and the door was slammed shut behind him.

He lay there in the dark, shuddering and trembling and hurting and wondering how he could survive this. Who could ask him to survive this? He couldn't do it.

"You can," the female voice whispered, and Harry felt a breeze stir his hair. "You can do this Harry. All you have to do is endure."

Harry smiled and leaned into the soft touch on his cheek that he could only just feel, and continued smiling as he drifted off to sleep.

ooOOooOOoo

Harry woke to voices again. "You get out of my rooms!"

"I can't, Bellatrix," a dark, masculine voice said. Snape. "I'm here on our Lord's orders. I need to examine the boy."

"He's mine!" Harry heard her shriek in rage and throw something, not that he had the faintest idea as to what she'd thrown. He heard it shatter against the wall, though, and heard a thump as she flung something else at the door to the closet. "He's mine, Severus, and you can't have him!"

"Yes, Bellatrix, I know that he's yours, but I must examine him!" Snape's voice was growing more irritated, as it approached the level of Neville right before he blew something up in a potions class. Harry could have told Bellatrix to just let it go, but he figured she probably wouldn't listen.

Also, he didn't care.

He heard Bellatrix shriek, heard her shout something in Latin, and heard Snape respond in kind. The flashes and bangs from just outside the closet door implied that they were duelling, and Harry tried to curl in tighter on himself but couldn't quite manage it. His limbs were still twitching terribly and he couldn't quite get them to move properly.

Eventually, the sound from outside the closet ceased and the door cracked open. "Potter," Snape said neutrally, and scooped Harry into his arms as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Bellatrix was unconscious on the floor, a slight bit of drool coming from her mouth as she let out a loud snore. "Let's get you checked out."

Harry stayed still as he was examined, drank the potions that Snape fed to him obediently. Even if they were going to hurt him, Harry found that he didn't care. It didn't matter. If Snape wanted him dead, there was nothing he could do about it. And there was nothing he wanted to do about it, to be honest. In fact…

"Please," Harry tried, now that his voice was working. "Professor Snape, please."

Snape stared down at him, his expression unreadable. "The treatment isn't going to undo the damage Bellatrix has done, but it will help with it. I'd tell you to try and avoid anymore exposure to the curse, but honestly I doubt that's possible."

"The Headmaster trusted you," Harry tried. "Said you were a good man. Please, Professor, won't you just kill me?"

Snape lowered his head, and when he raised it again his eyes were cold. "That the old fool trusted me was his mistake," he said coldly. "I am not a good man, and have not been one for an incredibly long time. Killing you would serve no point, Mr. Potter." He set Harry back in his closet easily, and as he closed the door he added, "And for the record, I have not been a Professor in years."

The door slammed shut and Harry heard Bellatrix's shrieking as she woke up. Harry curled in on himself, making himself as small as he possibly could, and was pathetically grateful for the ability to do so, even if he hated Snape for not killing him.

He felt a hand in his hair again, and another on his back, both gentle and soft and kind. "It's okay, Harry, we've got you," the woman's voice whispered, and Harry realized suddenly. Hermione. He was hearing Hermione. She'd stayed with him.

"Never leaving you, mate," the man said, and Harry could have cried because that was Ron. They were still with him, even if they were dead.

He wanted to be strong for them, but he couldn't stop the pathetic sob that tore itself from his throat when he realized that Ron and Hermione were still there.

Immediately, their wispy presences pressed closer to him and he heard them both murmuring soft soothing things to him, gentle whispers of love and affection, promises that none of what was happening was his fault, and Harry let himself go.

He cried himself to sleep, secure in the knowledge that, at the very least, he wasn't alone. Ron and Hermione were with him.

ooOOooOOoo

Harry couldn't have said how long he spent in Bellatrix Lestrange's care before the summons came. It was on a relatively quiet day, or at least Harry thought it had all been in the same day. It was so hard to tell. His closet was dark, and Bellatrix didn't feed him on any kind of regular schedule, so figuring out how long he'd been with her was almost impossible. Figuring out the amount of time between her uses of him was equally difficult, and Harry had given up trying.

It didn't matter. The point was that Bellatrix herself put him in a flimsy little robe that really wasn't much of a robe at all and barely covered anything Harry might have wanted covered, and drug him to the Great Hall, or Voldemort's audience room, once more.

Voldemort was waiting there, tapping his fingers idly against the throne. The room was empty this time, save for Bellatrix, Harry, Voldemort, and Snape. "Something very precious of mine was destroyed yesterday, Potter," Voldemort hissed as soon as Bellatrix had dropped to her knees and prostrated herself before the Dark Lord.

Harry didn't say anything, his eyes wide under the force of Voldemort's anger. It was vicious and painful and it burned. Harry already hurt, but this was making it even worse. He wanted to cry, but he couldn't let himself do it. He couldn't let Voldemort see him break.

"Something precious, that you were searching for when we finally got the last of that pathetic little order of the peacocks, or whatever you called yourselves." Voldemort stood, then, and paced towards Harry, each step slow and measured. "Tell me, Potter, did we successfully get rid of the last of your Order?"

The answer was, of course, yes. The Order had been annihilated, and it hadn't taken long at all. Most of the members hadn't lasted through the first few battles, and towards the end it had only been Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Fred.

Harry didn't say that, though. He was tired, so very tired, and all he wanted was to sleep, but he didn't say a thing.

"Answer me!" Voldemort roared, and when Harry didn't open his mouth, didn't say a single word, the pain started. It was terrible and nothing like the Cruciatus curse. This pain didn't burn, it froze. Harry couldn't even move under the force of the curse, could only stand there with his mouth open in a silent scream.

It cut off as abruptly as it had begun. "Now, Potter, are you willing to be reasonable?" Voldemort asked, his voice soft and almost kind. "I can be reasonable if you can. Wouldn't it be easier to just tell me what I want to know? It's not like I'm asking you who else is left, I'm just asking you if anyone is left. If you answer, you know that I can make your stay here so much more comfortable." Voldemort's voice turned coaxing. "Wouldn't you like to sleep in a nice bed, have a warm meal, rest and be cared for instead of sleeping in that awful closet?"

It sounded wonderful, and Harry couldn't resist the lure of proper rest, of soft beds and warm food. "There's nobody left," he said honestly, his voice thinner than he'd ever heard it, and shakier too. It almost didn't sound like his own, but he knew that it was him because he could feel the words leaving his lips.

"Liar!" Voldemort's shriek was high pitched and painful, but not as painful as the backhand across Harry's face that sent him to the floor. "Obnoxious little twit, trying to lie to me!" Voldemort snarled. His face was a mask of rage, and all Harry could do was curl in on himself and try to protect himself from the pain as it hit.

It did no good. Thankfully, Harry was sick and weak and broken. He passed out to the sound of Snape saying, "My Lord, it will do us no good to kill the boy yet."

ooOOooOOoo

Harry woke up in an oddly soft bed, in a sterile room that it took him a few minutes to recognize as the hospital wing. It was strange to be there and not hear Madam Pomfrey moving around, but instead to see Snape headed his way with a small tray of potions.

"I'm doing what I can to minimize the damage, Potter, but it is severe." Snape tipped several potions down Harry's throat, and Harry didn't bother trying to protest. "You've angered the Dark Lord terribly, Potter, do you understand?"

Harry blinked up at Snape, a strange lassitude taking over. He glanced over the man's shoulder and found himself smiling at Ron, who was making faces at the potions master.

"What on earth is he looking at, Severus?" The voice was unfamiliar, and Harry wanted to look and see who was talking, but honestly he just couldn't be bothered. Not when Ron was coming closer, when he could feel Ron's fingers on his cheek, stroking softly.

"I have not the slightest idea, Narcissa." Snape tipped another potion into Harry's throat, and he took it passively. "The boy is as well as he's going to be. If you'd like to take him now, you can."

"Very well," Narcissa, Mrs. Malfoy, whoever, said. "The Dark Lord is quite sick of seeing your face, Mr. Potter," she said primly. "To that end, you shall spend some time with myself and my husband at Malfoy Manor. We're certain we can make something useful of you, and perhaps even have some fun while we're at it. Bellatrix speaks highly of your ability to entertain, and I find myself intrigued."

Harry opened his mouth to protest, but the words wouldn't come out. He was instead shoved none too gently to his feet and led from the hospital wing. As he left, he felt something pressed into his hand, and while Narcissa wasn't looking at him and was waiting to Floo out of Hogwarts, Harry dared to glance at what turned out to be a scrap of parchment.

It said _Endure_ , and nothing else.


	3. Chapter Three: The Lord and Lady

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

 **Warnings: Slavery, rape, suicidal thoughts, insanity, torture, depression.**

Spoils of War

Chapter Three - The Lord and Lady

"The rules here," Narcissa was saying to a completely limp Harry as she chained him to the bed, "Are quite simple. If you perform well, you will be rewarded and well cared for. Should you perform poorly, you will be punished." She secured him deftly in bindings that he barely noticed. They didn't pinch or pain him in any way and, aside from the fact that he was entirely nude save for the collar around his neck, Harry almost didn't mind.

It was hard to struggle when he knew that there was nothing he could do should he make the attempt. So he just closed his eyes and let Narcissa Malfoy's voice wash over him.

"My lord and I, that is to say my husband and myself, have been told that you are a willful boy, but that you can be trained. My sister would say that of a dragon, however, and I don't entirely believe her in these matters."

Harry opened his mouth to protest, not at the notion that he could be trained but instead about the idea of him being a willful boy. He was nothing of the sort, not anymore. He'd long since surrendered any of the stubbornness that he'd once been known for. It did him no good. Everyone still died. At least now, as morbid as it seemed, there was nobody left to die.

"My husband is currently working," Narcissa was saying when he tuned back into her voice. "He's asked that I wait to sample our new toy until he returns home, so I'm afraid that you'll just have to be bored here by yourself for a few hours. I've simply too many things to worry about to sit and keep you company."

She left him in silence, in the open space of the bedroom, exposed to anyone who might have entered. Harry wanted to flee, to curl up into a ball to at least hide his nakedness, but he couldn't move. He couldn't struggle. The bindings on him were such that he could barely even flinch without rattling a chain, and the chains didn't have any slack on them at all.

He closed his eyes and tried to wait it out, and hoped that it wouldn't be long. He thought that maybe he heard a soft voice singing to him, maybe Mrs. Weasley's or somebody else's, but he couldn't be sure. Whether it was real or not, it was comforting, and Harry relaxed as he listened.

He couldn't have said how much time passed in that oddly peaceful state before he heard the door opening once more. Soft footsteps approached the bed and a hand, almost gentle, stroked its way down his face. Harry kept his eyes closed and let himself pretend that the hand belonged to someone he wanted touching him, like Ron or Hermione, but the illusion didn't last for long.

"Look at you, Potter," Lucius Malfoy's voice said, almost reverential in tone. "Spread out for my wife and I to enjoy, a perfect little toy."

Harry whimpered and forced himself to remain still. It wasn't hard. Part of him wanted to fight, wanted to bite the hand that was, even now, stroking over his lips, but the rest of him knew better. Fighting was useless. All it would do was hurt more.

So he lay there, and did his best to ignore the touches, both gentle and then, as time went on, not so gentle. The Malfoys were trying to get some kind of reaction out of him, and Harry eventually broke down and gave them what he hoped they wanted. It hurt and felt good all at the same time and he hated the way they made his stomach churn.

He shuddered his way through their use of him, but whatever he did it obviously wasn't the reaction they were looking for. The pleasure stopped, and Harry heard displeased words coming from both of them. He didn't know what they were saying, he was too far from coherence for that, but the tone registered clearly. Then the pain started.

The pain was a different kind than what Bellatrix had given him, but that didn't make it any less painful. He writhed and screamed and begged and pleaded on the bed, but nothing he did had any effect on the level of pain he was in. Finally, finally, when Harry was just a sobbing, whimpering wreck, the pain stopped.

"Useless thing," Lucius snarled. "Your sister said he'd be some fun, but I think she managed to break him before he was ever given to us."

"It is entirely possible," Narcissa agreed. "What shall we do with the useless little brat?"

"I'll handle it," Lucius said. He began to undo Harry's chains.

Now, when they thought him weak and broken and tired and destroyed, would have been Harry's best chance for escape. The only problem with that was that he was all of the above, and couldn't have moved if Ron and Hermione themselves had been behind Lucius, begging him to do so.

His body was levitated and he was taken out of the manor and placed in a garden, still naked but for the heavy metal collar that had never been removed from him. With the collar, Lucius chained him to a post in the middle of the garden, far from any kind of shelter or warmth.

"If you're just going to lie down and die like a dog, then that's what we'll treat you as," Lucius said coldly. The Malfoy Lord left him there, stalking away as Harry stared after him.

Harry opened his mouth to try and say something, but all that came out was a pained croak. He'd been screaming, so of course he couldn't talk. He wasn't sure what he would have said if he'd been able to speak, anyway. It wasn't like he could expect a Death Eater to show him anything resembling mercy.

Instead of wasting his energy trying to call Lucius back, or trying anything really, Harry just found the softest part of the ground, a flower bed with soft soil that he wouldn't mess up too much by laying in it since there were no flowers to crush that he could see, and curled up into a tiny ball to conserve some of his body heat.

Surprisingly, it wasn't actually that hard to drift off to sleep, in spite of the bite of cold in the air and his exposed state. As he drifted off, he felt gentle fingers stroking through his hair, soothing him and helping him to sleep.

ooOOooOOoo

Harry couldn't have said how long passed before his situation changed once more. The rapes were, he assumed, almost daily. Sometimes he managed to do whatever it was the Malfoys wanted from him, though he couldn't figure out what the commonality was between each incident, and sometimes he didn't. In the times that he managed to do what they wanted, Narcissa was something like a mother to him. She hand fed him and cleaned him and touched him gently and spoke soft, soothing words to him. In times when he didn't manage, which were more and more frequent as the days passed, he wound up chained in the garden.

He'd been chained there for three days, going by the number of sunrises he'd seen. He was cold and tired and frightened and wanted nothing more than to go to sleep and not wake up. Who could ask anything more of him? Hadn't he given this world everything he had?

"You can do this," Ron breathed in his ear. He could see Ron now, and Hermione too. They'd become visible sometime in the past few days and they almost never left his side. The only time they went was when Lucius or Narcissa came for him, and even then they were reluctant to leave.

Harry wanted them to go then, though. The last thing he wanted was for the last good thing in his life, if it could even be called that anymore, to be exorcised or otherwise destroyed.

"I can't," Harry whimpered. "I'm so tired."

"We know you are," Hermione breathed. She pressed a kiss to his forehead, her lips cool and barely there. "But we're here with you, Harry, and together we can do this. You know that we can."

Then they started to fade, which meant that someone was coming. Harry started and tried to look alert. It was still the early hours of the morning, which meant that it was strange for Narcissa to be coming for him. Or Lucius, for that matter. They normally left him to his own devices until evening, at least when he was chained in the gardens.

Lucius was the one who entered the garden, his gaze as cold and haughty as ever. "Still cluttering up the place, I see," Lucius said, disdain dripping from every word. "One would think, Potter, that you would at the very least have had the decency to die with your friends. Then we wouldn't have to waste our precious time looking after you."

Harry flinched. "I could," he said tiredly. "I could just die. Leave me out here to starve; I don't mind."

"To starve?" Lucius let out an incredulous little laugh. "Please, Potter, I know that you're awfully young and terribly naive, but what do you think my lord would do to me if I let his prized possession die in my care?"

Harry wanted to protest, to say that he was nobody's possession nor did he want to be. But what else was he? He definitely wasn't his own person anymore, and he didn't want to be, either. So he said nothing, and instead lowered his head and waited to hear what was coming. Whatever it was, it couldn't be any good.

"Ugh." The disgust in Lucius' voice made Harry flinch again. "Pathetic. To think, I almost long for the little boy who drove my son half to madness during his time at Hogwarts." Then Harry was jerked to his feet by a rough hand. "You're useless to Narcissa and I like this," he was informed, and a rough bundle of cloth was shoved into his arms.

Harry took it instinctively, then looked down. They were clothes, not unlike the old pillowcase he'd seen Dobby wearing once upon a time. "Sir?" Harry asked hesitantly. Lucius hated it when Harry used his name, and preferred to be addressed by something neutral and polite. Like sir. It was a lesson that both Lucius and Narcissa had beaten into him during the first few days of his stay.

"We're housing you and feeding you, you useless thing. Narcissa and I thought that if we weren't going to get any fun out of the bargain, we could at least get some useful work from you. Our house elves are tired, Potter, and I know how much concern you have for them. So I thought that we would give them a small break and let you take over some of their duties." Lucius' face transformed with a slow, evil looking grin. "Tonight is my anniversary with my lovely wife, Potter, and you'll be attending us."

Harry let out a trembling, shaky breath. He could do that. It wasn't that dissimilar to what he'd done for the Dursleys, so he could do that. He said nothing out loud, just bowed his head in a nod and waited for Lucius to unchain him and drag him out of the gardens to the kitchens, where he was greeted by several tired, broken-looking house elves.

Harry felt for them, but he couldn't bring himself to care very much. Why should he? They were in the same situation he was. All of them were just stuck. But at least he could handle this task that was put before him. It should be easy. It was just waiting on the Lord and Lady Malfoy.

He could handle that. He had to. He wasn't sure why it mattered, why he needed to hang on to this worthless life in spite of the fact that he mostly just wanted to sleep, but a small part of him did still want to hang on, so he would try his best.

ooOOooOOoo

Harry thought he could handle things as he brought out the salad course. He managed without too much trouble, carrying the dishes carefully and slowly. He was hurried along a touch by the impatience in Narcissa's voice, but for the most part he managed to handle himself well.

He did equally well with the soup, though that course was a bit more touchy given the way his hands shook with exhaustion and with lingering nerve damage from Bellatrix's favorite curse. He almost, almost spilled a drop of the bright red soup on the perfectly white tablecloth but managed to correct himself at the last possible second. Thus he escaped disaster in the second round.

The entrees were a nightmare, because Harry simply wasn't strong enough to carry both of them, not anymore. He hadn't been eating properly and it showed in the way that he knew that he couldn't hold both platters of food. So, even though he knew it might get him in trouble, Harry dared to carry them in to Lucius and Narcissa individually.

He was punished for it, in the form of a mild stinging curse. That tiny little hex was all the warning Harry needed not to do it again. He would bring both of their dishes at the same time or the punishment would grow worse.

It should have been over after dessert, which Harry did manage just fine because they were small and light plates of cake, but apparently Lucius and Narcissa wished to enjoy an after-dinner drink together. That meant that Harry had to pour the wine. He managed Lucius', though he almost poured too much into the glass and some very nearly sloshed out.

When it came to Narcissa's, however, Harry was unlucky enough to trip over something on his way to her. The red wine went everywhere, all over the tablecloth and Narcissa's beautiful white dress, and on top of that Harry caught the edge of the table as he fell and knocked off the two wine glasses. They shattered and Harry cringed, knowing that whatever punishment was coming would be epic.

It was. Lucius handled it, and Harry was lucky enough to lose himself only minutes into the whipping that followed. He was brought back only by a splash of something cold that burned in what had to be dozens of open whip marks on his back. It reeked of alcohol and Harry couldn't stop the scream that tore its way from his lips.

When it was over, he sagged on the ground and panted and tried to find the words to beg for forgiveness. None came. He was picked up by his hair, not even given the courtesy of a mobilization spell, and drug from the dining room where he'd served the dinner.

Harry didn't have to look around to know that they were back in the garden, to know that he'd been chained on the stake in the middle once more. He just curled up and tried to ignore the fiery pain in his back and hoped that he wouldn't wake up when he finally managed to sleep.

ooOOooOOoo

Harry woke with a start and wondered vaguely what had awoken him. Then he realized it was the rain pounding on his raw, open wounds, stinging with each drop that struck him. He shuddered and whimpered and curled up even tighter, hoping to make the pain stop. Maybe there was shelter in the garden? He knew there wasn't. He didn't bother to open his eyes and look. He just kept them closed and hoped that the pain would fade away.

He woke again sometime later, the rain having stopped, but the cold had set in. He was shivering terribly, unable to get warm no matter how tightly he curled in on himself. He wanted it all to be over, wanted the cold to fade, wanted to be warm again… he would never be warm again. Maybe the exposure to the elements would be the thing to finally kill him. Maybe, if he was lucky, this would be the end.

He woke up once more and felt gentle hands stroking through his hair. Warm hands, warmer than they had any right to be. He opened bleary eyes and found himself staring at Hermione's faded form. "You're warm," he slurred, not quite able to get his mouth to cooperate when it came to forming sounds.

Hermione just smiled at him. "You're very cold," she replied. "You might not make it this time."

Someone curled around him, gentle enough not to agitate the open sores on his back, and Harry shuddered at the warmth of it. How cold was he that the ghosts felt warm? He didn't care. It was almost like having them back with him for real, and Harry turned into Ron's embrace and let his eyes fall closed once more.

He woke another time, his whole body shuddering with aches and pains he couldn't begin to name. It was both too hot and too cold at the same time, and Harry wanted it to stop. He needed it to stop. "Please!" he begged, but nobody was listening. Nobody cared. He saw strange shapes moving in the shadows of the garden and he shuddered and closed his eyes, but he could still see them moving behind his eyelids. "No, no, no," Harry begged.

"It's okay," Ron said, his voice whisper soft and soothing. "It's okay, they're not real, Harry. You're okay. They're not really here, you're just feverish."

Harry whimpered and cried and eventually sobbed and screamed, but nobody heard that could help him. Just Ron and Hermione, and they were ghosts. There was nothing they could do for him. He was pathetically grateful when the world faded away once more.

ooOOooOOoo

The world faded back in for Harry, slow and not at all steady. First there was a rush of sensation, softness, like clouds, and glorious warmth, then nothing again. Then there were words that he couldn't quite make out, spoken by a dark and familiar voice, then silence. Then there was light being blocked by his eyelids, then that went away again. Everything came and went and came again in no particular order, and Harry gradually realized that he was regaining both his health and his consciousness, not that he wanted either.

Finally, he couldn't avoid it anymore. He let himself wake up, blinking slowly up at the white ceiling above him. He wasn't anywhere that he recognized, but when he looked around carefully he found that he was in a mostly-bare bedroom, likely within Malfoy Manor. The bed was warm and comfortable, and Harry found that all of the aches he'd felt during his illness had all but faded. He still felt weak, shaky, but overall he could tell that he was in much better condition. Magic. It had to have been magic.

For the first time in Harry's life, he found himself cursing the thing that allowed the Death Eaters to keep pulling him back from the brink of death. He just wanted to sleep, and it would seem that they weren't ever going to let him do that.

The door opened silently. Harry wouldn't have noticed at all if he hadn't been staring in that general direction. In a not even remotely surprising turn of events, Snape entered the room. "How are you feeling?" the potions master asked, his voice neutral.

Harry opened his mouth to answer, reflexively, not that he thought anyone cared, but all that came out was a small croak. He flinched from the sound, and the pain in his throat that caused him to make it.

"Ah," Snape said, like it was some great reveal. The once-Professor helped him to sit up with oddly gentle hands on Harry's shoulders, then held a cup for him to drink out of.

Part of Harry wanted to refuse, wanted to be a bit more proactive in his search for death. The rest of Harry was too tired even to do that. He took small sips of the water and eventually his throat felt less like he'd swallowed glass and more like it used to. "What happened?" he managed to ask after finishing the small cup.

"You were punished," Snape said, his nose wrinkled ever so slightly. "Neither Lucius nor Narcissa would say why, but that hardly matters. You contracted a fever due to your wounds going untreated, and you very nearly died. I was brought in to treat you."

"I wish you wouldn't," Harry said tiredly.

"I know," Snape said, his voice oddly soft. "And, though I'm sure it matters not, I am sorry." Snape touched Harry's hair, then, in a gentle gesture of reassurance. "Just a few more weeks, that's all I'm asking of you. A few more weeks."

Then the door opened once more and Snape's soft expression vanished behind an air of complete disdain as he straightened smoothly, not looking like he'd been startled at all. "The boy cannot be left out in the elements again, Narcissa. Not without shelter."

Narcissa heaved a heavy, put upon sigh. "Well, we can't have him cluttering up the house," she muttered. "I don't suppose that there's someone else who wants to take care of him for a few days? Someone who deserves a lovely reward?"

Snape shook his head. "Our Lord heard of his care in your hands and believes you to be the best ones to continue to educate him," he said. "If you'll excuse me? I'll be back in a week to check on his health. See to it that he doesn't end up in the same condition as before."

"Very well," Narcissa said with a put upon sigh. She held the door open for Snape. "Allow me the pleasure of walking you out, Severus?"

Snape held out an arm for Narcissa. "It would be a delight," he said, and the door closed behind them, leaving Harry alone.

"Just a few more weeks," Ron whispered in his ear, each breath stirring his hair. "We can do that, right?"

Harry wasn't sure. A few more weeks until what? What could Snape do for him? Did he even trust Snape to do anything at all?

"We have to," Hermione breathed. She patted Harry's hand and settled into the chair, her spectral form as prim and proper as she'd ever been. "We can handle a few more weeks."

A few more weeks. It sounded like an eternity, especially since he didn't know what waited for him at the end of it, but… he could handle a few more weeks. It was just that he was so tired…

"We've got this," Ron whispered, and Harry drifted back to sleep with a small smile. They had this, and he had Ron and Hermione. He could do anything they needed him to do.

ooOOooOOoo

He was given time to recover, during which he pretty much stayed in bed the entire time and Narcissa bustled about like a demented nurse who also liked to touch him in ways that shamed him. Harry tended to close his eyes and pretend like he wasn't there when she was doing so, but sometimes that didn't work. Eventually, though, he recovered from his illness and he was given a new set of duties.

"My darling husband thinks that you've outworn your usefulness to us in bed," Narcissa was saying with a sigh as she led him outside. "I disagree with him, of course, as I've still found you to be most amusing, but he is my husband, and his word is law when it comes to matters such as these." She ushered him into a greenhouse, or something like it, overly warm and filled with plants the likes of which Harry couldn't begin to identify.

"Now, rumor has it that you took care of your own Aunt's garden while growing up, is that correct?" Narcissa smiled sweetly at Harry.

Harry hesitated, then nodded once. "Yes, ma'am."

"I'm so glad to hear that," she said, and clapped her hands together. "You'll be taking care of this garden for us, Harry. My son grows many of his own potions ingredients here, and I think we can all agree that they deserve special care. The rules are simple: if you complete your tasks each day, you will be rewarded with food and a bed to sleep in. Should you fail to comply with these commands, you will sleep in the greenhouse at night. You will be fed, but you will find that your rations will decrease in quality as you fail to complete each task. Does this seem reasonable to you?"

Harry blinked at her. "Yes ma'am," he said. It was like the Dursleys, version two. At least this time if he did his work well he would be rewarded for it, even if it was only with food and a bed. He could manage this. He did it while starving for the Dursleys, after all, so a little bit of nerve damage wouldn't stop him from living through this.

And beneath his determination flickered the words _a few weeks_ over and over again. Just a few more weeks and it would all be over. Snape had said. Harry wasn't sure if he believed him, but the seduction of hope was too much to resist. A few more weeks. He only had to handle this for a few more weeks.

And he did handle it. He was tired all of the time, but the tiredness was different from the bone deep exhaustion he'd felt when he surrendered in the first place. It was more physical than mental, and Harry could handle physical exhaustion. He worked in the greenhouse, and on days he completed his work he was treated well. The portions of food were small and boring, but at least he was eating. On days when he didn't, he was still treated better than he had been at the Dursleys. His food might be reduced to bread and water, but even then he still got some fruit, and even then the greenhouse provided more shelter than the garden of a week before had.

He handled it. He managed. And every day that passed he told himself _a few more weeks_. He only had to last for a few more weeks. He could do it. Though he couldn't have said why, he felt as though he had to.

ooOOooOOoo

More than a few weeks had passed when he was summoned before Lucius and Narcissa once more. He was escorted there by a house elf, the same one to deliver him his duties in the morning and to deliver him his food as well. The elf was quiet and stern and had never introduced herself, and wouldn't respond when Harry asked her questions.

He was led to a small sitting room that he'd never been in, which wasn't much of a surprise given that he'd never seen much of the manor. Lucius and Narcissa waited for him there, along with their son, whose eyes lit up when he caught sight of Harry.

"Oh, look at you," Draco breathed, sounding almost reverential. "Mother, Father, please, I promise that I'll take such good care of him if you just let me have him for the week while Astoria's out of town."

"Well…" Narcissa glanced over at her husband, her eyebrow twitching.

Lucius glanced at his son, then at Harry, and a slow, cruel smile slipped over his face. "I don't see why not," Lucius said. "As long as you remember that Harry belongs first and foremost to our Lord, Draco, and he would hate to see anything happen to Harry before his time."

"I understand," Draco said, his voice light with excitement. "Oh, I promise that I understand."

"In that case, you two kids go and have fun," Lucius said. He was smirking.

Draco grabbed hold of Harry's chain and tugged him, gently, out of the room. "We're going to have so much fun while my wife's away, Potter," he promised.

Suddenly, for the first time in what felt like forever, Harry was afraid.


	4. Chapter Four: Hollow Victory

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter

 **Warnings: Rape, gang rape, torture, suicidal thoughts, suicide, insanity, humiliation, vomiting, graphic depiction of vomiting, force feeding, forced feminization.**

Spoils of War

Chapter Four - Hollow Victory

"Look at you, Potter, you're positively filthy," Draco sneered. He snapped his fingers, and two house elves appeared. "I've no interest in dealing with someone as disgusting as you are right now. You're hardly in any state to properly entertain me. Farry and Tarry will help get you into proper shape."

Harry didn't say anything. What was there to say? It wasn't like he thought that Malfoy would listen if he protested. So he kept his silence and hoped that whatever Draco had in mind wouldn't be too humiliating.

"Tarry, Farry, clean him. Prepare him as we discussed earlier, then dress him as I've commanded. I've left his new outfit lying on the bed in my bedroom. You are free to use my own personal bath to get our perfect little Potter back into good condition."

Then Draco was gone, leaving Harry alone with the two elves. He thought briefly about appealing to them for mercy, but one look at their grim little faces told him that mercy wasn't going to be a thing that would happen. "Halfblood will come with us," one of the elves squeaked.

"Yes," Harry said, and followed them without protest. If there was one thing he'd realized during his lifetime, it was that fighting only made things hurt even more. He was so tired of hurting, so tired of trying and failing. And Snape had promised him only a few more weeks… his time had to be almost up.

It was a small, futile hope, but he couldn't help clinging to it.

Harry found himself being stripped quickly of his clothes the second they entered the bathroom in what had to be Draco's room. A bath had already been drawn, though Harry couldn't begin to imagine how, given that the elves had been with him from the time they'd been summoned and given their orders. Maybe they'd known about them in advance, though.

Harry didn't know, and he supposed it didn't matter. The shock of the hot water didn't matter, even though it was hot enough to have his skin pinking within seconds. He shuddered through it, even as his body adjusted to the extreme heat. He was roughly scrubbed, the elves being coldly efficient with their touches. And nothing was left untouched. He was cleaned both inside and out, his insides incredibly thoroughly. His hands were attacked with rough stones and the callouses on them were rubbed away with little care for Harry's pain. His hands bled, but the elves didn't mind. They just smoothed a potion over the wounds and washed it off, and Harry's hands were soft and clean and covered in new skin. They also removed every bit of hair that wasn't on his head. It was a strange feeling, but at least that didn't hurt.

Once they pulled him out of the bath and dried him off, Harry though it was over. All they had to do was get him dressed, then it would be back to whatever tortures Malfoy had come up with. Except apparently that wasn't it at all.

"Did Master say how long he wanted the halfblood's hair to be?" one of the elves asked the other.

"Down to the waist," the other answered. "It shouldn't take too long. We'll have plenty of time to finish getting it ready."

Harry frowned. They were going… to grow out his hair? How strange. He hadn't even known that such a thing was possible, though he supposed he shouldn't be surprised. Then the process started and Harry flinched. It wasn't the worst thing he'd felt, not by a long shot, but it was pretty terrible. It burned and pulled along his entire scalp, like his hair was being jerked out by the roots. He didn't scream, though. It wasn't the Cruciatus. It wasn't any of the pain curses that Lucius and Narcissa favored. It just hurt. It wasn't excruciating.

"Master said pigtails, right?"

"Yes. He wants us to use these to decorate it."

Harry's now-long hair was pulled roughly into two ponytails that rode high on his head. Things were wound around the hair ties at the base, green gems on silver strands that cascaded through his hair. Then each elf grabbed one of his baby-soft hands and began to fiddle with the nails, making them burn the way that his hair had burned. His nails were lengthened forcibly, until they were about a two centimeters long. They were coated in something that burned and Harry looked away so that he didn't have to see what they were doing to him.

It was becoming pretty obvious what Malfoy had in mind, so Harry wasn't even remotely surprised when he was led from the bathroom to Draco's bedroom, where a frighteningly short dress awaited, along with a pair of high heels that Harry just knew he'd never be able to walk in.

The dress was dark green with a floral silver pattern on it. It was high necked, with a small diamond opening at the hollow of his throat. He was ordered into it by the elves, and Harry thought about fighting it. He thought about what it would take to get away from them, and realized that he had no idea what house elf magic could do. Would it even be possible to get away from them?

Harry took a single step back, and was immediately frozen in place. "Of course it decides to make things difficult," one of the elves said with a sigh.

He was then dressed like a mannequin, frozen in place as they put him first in the dress, which barely covered his privates, then in the sheer silver stockings and the emerald green heels that matched the dress. They didn't even give him any underwear to wear. Harry's cheeks burned with the force of his humiliation.

"And now it's blushing, meaning it will be harder to get the makeup right," the other elf sighed. "It's like the halfblood thinks that these passive protests will make this all go away."

"They won't, of course," the first elf said. "Master will use the halfblood how he sees fit, and it should just accept that."

Harry flinched. It was like he wasn't even a person, just a doll for them to dress up. He supposed the blush must have faded from his cheeks, because they stopped talking about him then and concentrated on doing his makeup.

His face was powdered and his lips were painted. His eyelids were dusted and a small brush was taken to his eyelashes. He got poked in the eye once or twice with a small pencil, too. It made his eyes water, which the elves didn't like. Fortunately he didn't cry and ruin their work, as they said over his head.

Then they left him alone with stern warnings not to move. "Master will be with the halfblood soon," one of the elves squeaked, and then Harry was left sitting on the bed in the silent room.

He wanted to stand up, to walk around, but he didn't dare with the heels on. He thought about taking them off, but they were strapped around his ankles and he didn't think he could get them off with his newly-lengthened nails.

He wanted to cry from the sheer embarrassment of it all, but he managed to hold that back. He didn't want to know what would be done to him if he messed up all the makeup that had been put on him.

"It's okay, Harry," Ron's warm voice whispered in his ear. "This isn't your fault. This is just Malfoy trying to get a rise out of you."

A ghostly arm wrapped around his shoulders and Hermione breathed into his other ear, "You know that we still love you no matter what Malfoy does, right? He can't do anything to you that will lessen our feelings for you."

"You're ours," Ron promised.

Harry sighed and tried to relax. "I love you both," he whispered. "So much. I couldn't do this without you."

"You never have to," Hermione breathed into Harry's ear.

Then the door opened, and both disappeared, leaving Harry alone on the bed.

Draco entered the room, wearing black dress robes and a lecherous grin. "My, my, Harry… oh, I'm sorry, I suppose I should use a girl's name for you? I believe flower names are tradition in your family… Rose. You look lovely tonight."

Harry flinched. "Harry is fine."

"But you're not Harry, are you? You're my perfect little Rose." Draco came closer, his eyes bright with amusement and arousal. "We're going to have a lovely time together this week, don't you know that, Rose?"

Harry didn't answer. He just looked down and away.

"Oh, giving me the silent treatment, are we?" Draco laughed. "That's okay. We'll see if we can't get a response from you before the night is over." Draco patted him on the cheek, then hauled him to his feet. "You'd better lean on me, darling. I wouldn't want you to topple down the stairs in those lovely shoes of yours."

The last thing Harry wanted to do was lean on Draco, but he didn't want to fall down the stairs, either. He was tired of hurting. He was tired of all of this. So he leaned on Draco's arm and let himself be led down the stairs and into a dining room that he'd never seen before.

There were people there, and all of them stopped and stared at Harry as he was led into the room. He was suddenly, painfully aware of the fact that he looked like a girl, and a… well, a slutty one at that. He was excruciatingly conscious of the fact that he wasn't wearing any underwear, and if his dress just happened to ride up at any point, every single one of these people would know that as well. He shuddered and buried his pinking cheeks in Draco's shoulder, desperate to get away from the hot gazes of those that surrounded him.

"Have you all met Rose Potter?" Draco was asking, the laughter in his voice inviting everyone to share his amusement. "She's lovely, isn't she?"

Harry tried to tune the rest of the night out, hoping that humiliation would be all that was planned, but apparently he wasn't going to be that lucky. Instead, he was settled at the head of the table with Draco, where every single one of Draco's friends, many that Harry recognized from Hogwarts, could stare at him to their heart's content.

The meal was served, though Harry didn't receive a plate of his own. Rather, Draco would pick up a forkful of his own food and hold it out until Harry took it from him. The food was rich, richer than anything he'd had in his entire life. Foie gras, breads covered in melted cheeses, meats treated in the same way. It was making him queasy, and every time he tried to refuse a bite Draco would slide a hand up his skirt and fondle him roughly, his eyes conveying a clear threat each time. _Disobey me_ , those eyes said, _and I'll let everyone see me doing this to you_.

So Harry ate everything that was presented to him, even when he knew that it was going to have a bad effect on his stomach. It got worse when dessert was brought out, a decadent chocolate cake covered in thick frosting. Draco held out a forkful, and Harry tried to swallow it. He really did.

He chewed it and tried to swallow it, but he couldn't quite make it go down. So he chewed some more, carefully, then tried to swallow it again. By now it tasted rancid in his mouth, and the texture had changed to something thick and grainy. He tried to swallow again, and instead couldn't stop himself from gagging. He swallowed desperately, hoping that he could stop himself, but it didn't work. The bite of cake came back up in a wash of bile, along with everything else he'd eaten. He could feel the mess clawing its way out of his stomach as he heaved and heaved again. Chunks of it got caught in his throat and he gagged and heaved and choked on them until they came all the way up.

When it was over, tears and snot coated his face and he sat there, covered in his own sick, panting helplessly for breath. His cheeks burned both from exertion and from embarrassment, and that was before the laughter started.

"Look at that! Can't even feed a thing like that good food!"

"What a waste, Draco. Why would you have thought that the pauper could appreciate a meal like that?"

"My sincerest apologies," Draco said, though he sounded like he was holding back his own laughter. "Clearly the bitch is really just a dog, and we can't let dogs like that eat at the table with us, can we? I'll have her removed from our presence and cleaned up like the filthy mongrel she is."

The house elves took Harry and cleaned him once more, even more brutal this time than they'd been the last. They were almost vicious about it, muttering to each other about how the halflbood had wasted their Master's good food, good money. How they shouldn't have to spend so much time prettying up such a waste of space.

The rape, when Draco returned to his room to do it, was almost an afterthought. It was exactly like any of the other times he'd been fucked by Lucius, and Harry could almost block it out completely. It wasn't what Draco wanted, of course, and he got creative trying to get a response from Harry.

He was no Bellatrix, though, and failed to elicit any kind of reaction. This was just sex and pain, and Harry was well-versed in dealing with those at this point.

After Draco had gone, infuriated by the total lack of response from Harry, Ron and Hermione returned, curling around him, soothing him with soft touches and gentle words and oaths of adoration. Harry relaxed in their embrace.

 _Just a few more weeks_ , he told himself. _Just a few more weeks._

ooOOooOOoo

Once Harry adjusted to the humiliation of being constantly dressed like a girl, the majority of the rest of the week wasn't that bad. For the most part, Draco left him alone. He wasn't like his parents, who constantly found new and creative ways to try and get him to react, and he wasn't like Bellatrix, who was happy using the same curse on him over and over again. No, Draco seemed to get bored as soon as he realized that Harry just didn't care anymore, and wandered off to other things.

The shame of being dressed in scanty dresses never went away, though. He got more used to it, certainly, but it was always in the back of his mind that he looked like the freak his family had once told him he was. He hated it, but he would rather have the humiliation than the pain.

Then the end of the week arrived, and Draco came to visit him. Harry wore a particularly… revealing outfit that day, a midriff baring top and a skirt that didn't quite manage to cover him completely. The heels that he wore made it impossible for him to walk anywhere, given that he was practically on pointe.

"You look like a whore," Draco said conversationally.

Harry didn't answer. He didn't even look up from studying his nails (still long, still green and silver). He knew that the other man was trying to get a rise out of him, and just like every other time he'd made the attempt, he knew that Draco would eventually give up and go away. In a way, being Draco's for the week was much more restful than his time with Draco's parents.

"You're boring like this, Rose Potter," Draco sneered. "Where'd that famous Gryffindor fire go?"

Harry finally smiled, a slow and sad thing. "It burned out a long time ago, Malfoy," he said tiredly. He looked up at Draco and something in his eyes made the blonde blanche and take a step back. "Something wrong?"

"N-no," Draco stammered. He shook his head and visibly forced himself to step further into the room. He was still pale, unhealthily so. "No, Rose, nothing's wrong," he said. "You know that my wife comes back tomorrow, don't you?"

Harry dipped his head in a nod.

"I just thought that it might be nice to throw you something of a going away party," Draco said, with a note of savage glee in his voice that made Harry's eyes narrow. "Something to make sure that you remember me fondly after the Dark Lord finally gets tired of keeping you around."

"If the Dark Lord gets tired of keeping me around, I'll be dead," Harry pointed out. "I won't remember much of anything at all."

Draco made a noise of disgust. "Think you're so clever, do you?" he asked, sneering. "Please, _Rose_ , you're nothing but a cheap whore. And this party is going to help you remember exactly what you are."

Harry's head jerked up, but he didn't have much time at all to respond to those words before he was immobilized on the bed. The door opened once more, and Harry was almost frightened to see men joining them in the room. And they were familiar men that Harry recognized from Hogwarts, not strangers. People he'd gone to school with, like Nott, Zabini, and Flint.

Flint approached the bed first. "Let the pretty little bitch struggle, Draco. I like that," the massive ogre of a man said, and ran a rough, calloused palm along the soft inside of Harry's thigh.

Harry retreated into his own head, where he didn't feel much of anything that they did to him. It was a skill he'd perfected over his time with Narcissa and Lucius, and apparently it worked no matter what was being done to him. Oh, there were flashes of sensation, bits of pain or pleasure, a feeling of having his air cut off as one of the men shoved into his mouth, but it wasn't as bad as Draco had undoubtedly hoped.

Eventually the lack of air got to him, and the world went dark around Harry.

ooOOooOOoo

Harry woke in a room that was becoming familiar to him. He could feel gentle hands tending to what were probably injuries, smoothing soothing salves over wounds that Harry couldn't have begun to identify. He opened his eyes slowly, carefully, wincing at the brightness of the room. "'s bright," he slurred.

There was a small inhalation of breath, then he heard Snape murmur something softly. Immediately the lights dimmed and Harry relaxed.

He was probably drugged, he knew that because he felt like he was floating. And he could barely feel any of his injuries, meaning that they'd either already been treated or he was on painkillers. Harry couldn't begin to guess.

"You've done so well holding on for me, Harry," Snape said softly, his voice barely above a whisper. "It's time."

Harry's eyes widened. "Time?" he asked, not sure if he understood. He hoped he did, though. He hoped that what Snape was saying was that things would be over soon.

"The Dark Lord successfully overthrew the Ministry on this very day a year or so ago," Snape said softly. He continued to carefully and gently smooth salve onto Harry's wounds, his touch the gentlest that Harry thought he'd ever felt. "He wishes to celebrate, and to that end, he's asked for your presence in his suite at the Manor tonight, after the party being held in his honor."

Harry blinked up at Snape, still feeling cloudy and barely focused. "He's going to use me," Harry said. It wasn't like it was a surprise. It seemed to be all anyone wanted from him these days.

"I don't doubt it." Snape looked away and cleared his throat, his hands stilling for a moment. Then he began to treat Harry's wounds once more, focusing on a bite mark on Harry's inner thigh. "You need to distract him. At least until the poison I will have fed to his snake begins to take effect."

Harry's heart stopped. Nagini… the last horcrux… The diadem had still been… but that had been destroyed, hadn't it? That meant that… that Voldemort could be killed. That Harry could finally finish it. Finish everything. And then he could… and then he could rest…

"You're poisoning her?" Harry asked, his voice trembling.

Snape nodded. "I destroyed the diadem months ago, through the use of a spell you've probably never heard of: Fiendfyre. Voldemort never suspected me, not once. And all this time, I've been doing my best to keep you alive so that when his final horcrux is destroyed, you can end this once and for all. Can you do that, Harry?"

Harry closed his eyes and considered the question. He was tired, so very tired, and his body ached in ways that he thought would never go away. His hands shook constantly, and his legs barely supported his weight sometimes. But… but could he do it? Could he finish Voldemort?

"I can try," Harry finally said, his voice shaking.

"Good boy," Snape said, and carefully smoothed Harry's hair back from his forehead. He pressed a soft kiss to the lightning scar, then drew back. "The Malfoy family elves will be coming for you soon, to prepare you for tonight. Stay strong, and don't act until you see Nagini begin to spasm."

"Okay," Harry whispered around the lump in his throat that had formed at the strangely tender gesture from the Professor.

"And Harry, when it's over, I promise that nobody will ever ask anything of you again." Snape stroked his hair once more, then backed up. "Everything will be fine after tonight."

Harry managed a smile for the potions master. "Yes," he agreed, though he doubted that they thought so for the same reason. After tonight, it would all be over. After tonight, if he was very lucky, he could finally rest.

ooOOooOOoo

Harry was shivering, and he didn't even care. It had been an hour, and ever since Snape had left him Ron and Hermione had been with him. Their embrace, together, was making him almost unspeakably cold, but he didn't care. It was too nice to have them there, holding him, telling him that everything was going to be okay after tonight. And it was, Harry was certain of it.

Eventually, though, the house elves came. The same two who had prepared him for Draco each and every day were back, and they looked just as fed up with Harry as they had at the beginning of the week. Harry didn't protest or struggle as he was dumped into another scorching hot bath, as he was scrubbed and cleaned and shaved, even though all of it seemed somehow worse than it had been before. Was it because they were preparing him for the Dark Lord, or was it because Harry knew this was the last time it would ever happen?

It didn't matter. After he was bathed and dried off, the elves set about the task of making Harry presentable. His still-long hair was brushed until it fell like silk around his naked shoulders, then it was brushed some more for good measure. His nails were touched up, though he didn't think they needed anything, and the slightest amount of makeup was applied to his face. Just some stuff around the eyes and a bit to his lips.

He was dressed in robes, then, that it took four elves to get him into. They were heavy and thick, so heavy that Harry could barely stand under their weight. They were deep, deep green, so dark as to be almost black, with silver buttons and accents. Of course he would be in Slytherin colors. Apparently all Death Eaters were the same kind of unoriginal.

Instead of the terrible heels he'd been forced into under Draco's care, the elves had him step into slippers that were soft and comfortable, and would be easy to walk in. Then, apparently, it was time.

The elves had to walk with him, because the robes really were too heavy for Harry to move in. He'd lost so much of his strength during his captivity that he wondered if he would even be able to manage when the time came. Maybe… hopefully…

He closed his eyes and breathed in. Did it matter? All he could do was try. A strange sort of peace settled over Harry as he walked. All he could do was try, and if he succeeded, it would all be over. If he failed, it would probably also all be over, and Harry was okay with that.

He arrived in Voldemort's suite, which was surprisingly understated compared with the rest of Malfoy manor. The elves settled him in one of the comfortable armchairs near a roaring fire, then disappeared all at the same time. Harry closed his eyes and waited.

It might have taken no time at all, or it might have taken forever, Harry honestly couldn't have said. He fell into a kind of meditative state, one that broke only when he felt cool scales brush against his ankles. Harry opened his eyes to find Voldemort kneeling in front of him, staring at him, looking almost enchanted.

"You really are quite lovely," Voldemort said, and raised a hand to stroke through Harry's hair. In Snape it had felt tender, in Voldemort it felt possessive.

"Thank you," Harry said after a beat of silence. He didn't want to play along, but he needed to hold on until Nagini started to spasm. He could do this. He had to do this. He had failed at so much in his life… this was his chance to make things right. To make up for everything that he'd never done.

"You are most welcome," Voldemort said. He held out a hand for Harry, and Harry took it with no hesitation. He was drawn to his feet and Voldemort pulled him into his arms, curling his arms around Harry's waist. Voldemort swayed them both, dancing to a music that Harry couldn't hear.

It was fine. He could play along.

Voldemort eventually moved them both, pulling back slightly and helping Harry to the small table set for one. He settled Harry on the floor, on a pillow that had apparently been placed there for this very purpose, then the Dark Lord began to feed Harry. The food wasn't for him at all, as he never took a bite of it.

Instead, he hand fed each morsel of food, bits of vegetables and meats and breads, to Harry, never forcing him to eat as Malfoy had done. He was treating Harry like a favored pet, and it was making Harry feel uncomfortable. He would have preferred pain to this strange treatment.

His discomfort must have shown on his face, because Voldemort stopped feeding him. "Are you too warm in your robes, perhaps?" Voldemort asked, his voice light and playful. "Should I take you out of them and see if you can eat if you aren't overheated?"

Harry just blinked up at Voldemort and didn't respond. It didn't matter what he said at this point. Soon, soon, enough time would have passed that he could finally do his best to kill the monster standing before him.

"Or maybe you're just not hungry," Voldemort murmured, and drew Harry to his feet with firm, but gentle, hands. "That's fine. I'm more than hungry enough for both of us, though my hunger isn't for food."

Harry was led into the bedroom, where Nagini was curled in a basket in full view of the bed. He was stripped and settled on the bed, with Voldemort following only seconds later. Harry closed his eyes and waited for the pain to start, but there was none.

"You're truly beautiful," Voldemort was whispering, "And I feel so connected to you. I wonder…" Voldemort let out a strange, shuddery breath, then he leaned in and pressed a kiss to Harry's lips. "Oh, I know what you are," he breathed, and kissed Harry again almost desperately. "You're mine, aren't you? Mine, all this time. No wonder you couldn't hurt me. You never wanted to, did you? You recognized what you were." Voldemort stroked a possessive hand over Harry's scar.

Harry just blinked up at him. He didn't know what Voldemort was talking about, but he supposed it didn't matter. The man was mad, had been for years.

"You've got a piece of my soul inside of you," Voldemort hissed out, sounding gleeful and triumphant. He pressed another kiss to Harry's lips, almost feverish in its fervency, and Harry tried not to shudder.

A horcrux? Him? Was that even possible?

It didn't matter. After tonight… after tonight, Voldemort would be dead. Harry was going to do his best to make certain of it.

Voldemort began to caress him, practically worshipping Harry's body. The pleasure was harder to ignore than pain, it always was, but Harry gave it his best effort. Everything faded away, all sensation, all sense of violation, it all just disappeared under the weight of Harry's carefully practiced indifference. He couldn't have said how long he stayed locked away inside his own head when something… something snapped him out of it.

Movement. From the basket. Voldemort was moving inside of him, hissing endearments and praises in Harry's ear in parseltongue, and Nagini was spasming her death throes right next to the bed. She stilled, and a strange blue foam began to pour from her mouth. She was gone, and Voldemort hadn't even noticed. He was enjoying being inside of Harry, moving in him, taking him and possessing him.

Harry lifted his hands, which shook violently, and laid one on either side of Voldemort's head. He wasn't sure if he could do this. He was too weak, too broken. He didn't know if he could…

"~Beautiful Harry, so sweet, so tender. I'll make you my consort, that's what I'll do, and I'll take such good care of you. My beautiful horcrux,~" Voldemort was hissing in his ear as his thrusts increased in speed.

Harry shuddered at the words. He almost dropped his hands when, suddenly, two spectral sets of hands joined him.

"We can do this," Hermione said, even as Voldemort began to release inside of Harry.

"Together, Harry, we can end this," Ron breathed.

With what felt like a herculean effort, Harry wrenched Voldemort's head around, snapping his neck in one smooth motion. Voldemort didn't even have time to feel it, most likely, given that his breathing stopped almost immediately.

Harry waited for a second, trying to make sure that he was dead, then shoved the corpse off of him with shaking hands. Ron and Hermione were nowhere to be found, but that was okay. Harry knew what he had to do.

Naked, legs trembling beneath him, Harry made his way from the bedroom and back into the main room of the suite. He'd seen… there it was. He hadn't been sure, but he'd thought he'd seen Voldemort cutting the meat he'd been feeding him.

The knife wasn't big, but it didn't have to be. Harry grabbed it and looked down at himself, at his wasted form and his shaking hands, and then he didn't hesitate. He cut into his wrist, cutting in as deep as he could and then dragging the knife up along the vein he could see in his arm. Then, already feeling strangely lightheaded, he used his uninjured hand to raise the knife to his throat. He shoved it in, slicing into his windpipe, slicing through muscles and skin and who knew what else. Then he moved the knife, dragging it through as much of his flesh as he could. He didn't even feel it.

But eventually, in what felt like only seconds and probably wasn't much longer at all, the world began to darken around the edges, then everything went black.


	5. Epilogue: Hero's Rest

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

Spoils of War

Epilogue - Hero's Rest

Harry woke up.

He had no words for how bitterly disappointed he was about that.

He was warm and comfortable, though, and the room that he was in was one that he didn't recognize. It was beautiful, though, and lit with pale sunlight that made Harry almost feel happy just to look at. He sat up and was surprised to find that he was in no pain, that he felt better than he'd felt in recent memory. He looked down at his hands, but there were no wounds there. Not even scars on the arm where he'd hacked into himself. And, oddly enough, his hands were no longer shaking.

Magic truly was both amazing and terrifying in its capabilities.

Harry slipped from the bed and his bare feet sank into the plush carpeting. He was wearing an oversized white shirt and a pair of white pants that were loose and comfortable. He left the room he was in and found himself standing in a hallway. He turned left and started walking. Eventually he came to a set of stairs and walked down them.

The stairwell opened up into a large living room, furnished in much the same way that the bedroom had been with soft carpeting and comfortable furniture. And on the couch waiting for him were Ron and Hermione, looking as real and solid as they had in life.

Finally, Harry realized. He'd not woken up at all. He'd succeeded.

His eyes widened and he realized that he was crying when they rushed to his side. They were warm and solid and so wonderful as they held him, both of them. "We're here," Hermione was whispering to him, her lips moving against his hair and her breasts pressed against his back.

"We're so sorry you had to go through all of that," Ron murmured, his forehead pressed to Harry's.

"But you were with me the whole time," Harry whispered back. He closed his eyes and savored the feeling of them, close, solid and real and warm.

"Harry, mate, we weren't- ow!" There was a thud of something connecting with Ron's flesh, like a slap or a punch.

"Harry," Hermione breathed, and when Harry twisted to look at her there was a faint frown on her face. Then it cleared and she smiled. "We're glad you weren't alone," she said.

Harry relaxed entirely into their hold. "Is it over now?" he asked them, even though they probably didn't know. How would they know if they'd left when he did?

"It's over," an unfamiliar voice confirmed.

Harry pulled away and turned towards the voice. It was a man who looked… a lot like him, actually. Harry's eyes widened in realization. "Y-you're," he breathed. He couldn't finish the sentence.

The man came towards him. "Hello Harry," he said quietly. "Your mother and I are so very proud of you." He reached out to touch Harry's shoulder but didn't seem surprised when Harry flinched away before he could help himself. "It's okay," he said. "You've been through a lot. We have plenty of time here."

"Is…" Harry stopped and took a deep breath, leaning further into Ron's and Hermione's arms. "Is everyone here?"

James Potter's lips quirked into a smile. "Everyone," he said quietly. "Your mother, Padfoot, Moony, the Weasleys. We all stuck around to wait for you."

"It took me so long," Harry said, and he couldn't stop the tears that started to fall once more.

"That's okay," Hermione said quickly. "We didn't mind waiting."

"We'll wait as long as you want us to," Ron said. "We were cheated out of our lives with you, you know. This is a chance for all of us to have what we've missed."

"Everyone's waiting outside for you," James said, but gently. "We didn't want to overwhelm you, so I was nominated to come see if you wanted to see everyone."

"Nominated?" Hermione asked, the skepticism thick in her voice.

"You probably had a full-on duel with Padfoot over it," Ron said with a soft laugh.

"Well, it isn't like I could kill him again or anything," James said with a shrug.

Harry hesitated, then reached out and took his father's hand. "I'd like to try going outside," he said. His father's hand was heavy and warm in his own. Harry was glad to be able to take it without flinching.

Ron's arm went around his shoulder and Hermione lead the way for the three of them. "Don't all mob him at once, now," she called to the group outside.

Harry stepped through the doors and into the light, feeling lighter than he had in a very long time. He'd earned this peace, and he was determined to enjoy it.


End file.
